Far from the Model Minority

Face, Class, and Transnational Chinese Families

Far from the Model Minority centers the voices of five undocumented and mixed-status Chinese immigrant families in New York City and their sending communities in Fuzhou, China. Challenging dominant narratives about Chinese Americans and the model-minority myth, these families have experienced multigenerational exclusion from educational pathways and developed mobility strategies focused on attaining “face.”

In China, low social standing led them to prioritize immigration and remittance work over education, as overseas success became the primary way to garner face. Yet in the United States, undocumented status and poverty created new barriers to their and their children's acculturation, and the intersection of undocumented life and the culture of remittances often undermined the intended face gain for families back home and reinforced social stagnation. Based on four years of ethnographic research, Jia-Lin Liu's work explores how these transnational families respond to enduring structural exclusions by reimagining achievement and dignity across borders.

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